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Friday, 24 July 2015

It’s time for a writing
update! Because this is
a writing blog, believe it or not. But writing about writing is even
more boring than talking about writing so I don’t do these posts
very often.

QOTSS is now out on
submission to publishers, so it’s time to turn my attention to
something new. I’m working on another edit of TLDK. Nothing
serious, just making a few small alterations and tightening up the
text. I’ve also had an edit of WFTD on hold for about a year so I
should really get back to that too.

But working on old stuff is
kind of dull and I’m always looking to my next project. I’ve got
an idea for a new book, but it’s in the early concept phase right
now. It’s a sort-of-but-not-quite prequel to QOTSS currently titled
DOTJ. I’m slowly hammering out a plot and building the world and
characters.

In other writing news, my
e-book promotion came to an end and I’ll try to remember to do
another soon.

Monday, 20 July 2015

In games about war, we’re
used to playing as a soldier. In This War of Mine, however, you don’t
play as a soldier, but as a civilian, struggling to survive within a
war zone. It’s an interesting concept, but I was wary of This War
of Mine. Though I found its subject matter intriguing, what I’d
seen of its gameplay appeared rather lacklustre. But watching a game
and playing a game can provide two very different experiences. So,
despite my reservations, I decided to pick it up in the recent Steam
sale.

There’s no tutorial to
ease you into things. You’re expected to learn on the go, although
honestly, everything is fairly self explanatory. You begin with a
small group of survivors in your ‘home’ shelter. Each survivor is
unique in terms of appearance, skills (scavenging, cooking or
bartering) and particular quirks (a preference for coffee or
cigarettes, or prone to depression). You control everything with the
mouse, clicking to move or interact, and you can switch between the
different survivors at will.

The game is split into two
phases – Day and Night. During the day, you’ll be at your
shelter, issuing commands to your group, having them eat, rest, cook
or craft as appropriate. You’ll receive the odd visit from a
trader, or perhaps a fellow survivor who wishes to join you or needs
help. During the night, you’ll assign your survivors to a certain
role – to sleep, to guard your shelter, or to scavenge.

In order to improve your
shelter (and therefore your chances of survival) you’ll need
materials. Materials come in various categories such as building
materials like wood for patching up holes in walls, or herbs you can
craft into medicine or cigarettes. You’ll scavenge for these
materials during the night phase at various locations which unlock as
you progress.

It’s a simple, but solid
structure of gather and build, and there’s a certain satisfaction
in slowly watching your shelter expand, upgrading crafting stations
and positioning new furniture. It’s not the most complex system,
but it allows for a small, personal touch to be applied, which is
very important in terms of player investment. Because if there’s
one thing that This War of Mine struggles to achieve, it’s personal
investment on the part of the player.

Upon starting the game,
many elements of the world will be randomised. This includes your
starting survivors, scavenge locations, local inhabitants, weather
and materials. It gives the game a degree of replayability, but it’s
sadly not as extensive as you might hope. There’s only a small
number of survivors and locations, and ultimately, every game plays
out the same regardless of which are available. There’s also a very
limited number of unique events or encounters, and you’ll see the
majority of these across a single playthrough.

As I mentioned, there’s
no tutorial as such, but everything is fairly self-explanatory. If
your shelter is cold, you build a heater to warm it up. You build a
cooker to, uh, cook food. You build a garden to grow vegetables. If a
character is hungry, you feed them. If they’re sick, you give them
medication. If they’re tired, you send them to bed. It’s like The
Sims, but everyone leads bleak, depressing lives. Actually, it’s
exactly like The Sims, except nobody ever needs to use the toilet,
which is a little weird.

Purely from the standpoint
of its gameplay mechanics, This War of Mine is a rather monotonous
affair. The majority of the time you’ll simply be staring at little
yellow circles as your survivors craft items or search through trash.
Player interactivity is minimal resulting in a very passive ‘playing’
experience. You simply don’t feel involved in the action. And this
results in the problem of player investment. Because as much as I was
hoping otherwise, I struggled to engage with This War of Mine.

Your ‘unique’ survivors
lack any personality aside from the odd quirk, so it’s hard to
really care about them as ‘people’. There’s barely any
interaction between them – they just tend to stand staring silently
at one another until you issue orders. And whilst the game attempts
to place the player into moral quandaries – do you steal food from
fellow, peaceful survivors? – there’s no real consequences or
impact from doing so, aside from making certain characters feel a bit
‘sad’.

I should feel bad about
beating a homeless guy to death with a crowbar and stealing his
canned food, but This War of Mine fails to elicit any kind of
emotional reaction. The real problem, for me, is that this vicious
act is handled by the same minimal interactivity of ‘click to move’
and ‘click to murder’. It’s a disconnected experience resulting
in an emotionless experience.

This basic gameplay system
is also terrible in terms of ‘stealth’ and ‘combat’. Combat
is extremely fiddly, as you click to attack, only to watch two
characters awkwardly try to slap one another. Thankfully, combat
isn’t really necessary or a focus of the experience. Most of the
time, you’ll just be searching through piles of junk and loading up
supplies to bring home, which you’ll then use to improve your
shelter and feed/heal your survivors. And that’s about it really,
and yes, it’s as repetitive as it sounds. The ultimate goal is to
keep your survivors alive until the (randomised) cease fire.

But with such simplistic
gameplay, and a failure to engage the player on an emotive level,
it’s hard to recommend This War of Mine. I do, however, think
there’s a lot of untapped potential here. There are events such as
the shelter raids, but it’s something you never actually see. It
happens ‘off screen’ during the night phase and you’re only
informed of what happened, what was stolen or who was injured at the
start of the next day.

This off screen action also
applies to helping fellow survivors (such as fending off a bandit
raid or retrieving supply drops). It’s a shame these potentially
more exciting moments are things you don’t actually get to play.
There’s also no real learning/difficulty curve to the game. You can
build nearly everything you need to survive within a matter of days,
and upgrading these tools is simply a matter of gathering the
required resources.

But because there’s a
strict limit in how many materials you can carry, (and because many
upgrades have pointlessly high material costs) you’ll often return
to your shelter a few short of what you need. But this doesn’t make
the game any more challenging as it does tedious.

There isn’t really any
‘story’ as such to This War of Mine. You should really view it as
a sandbox experience in which you create your own story based around
these characters. And one thing I did
like was the ‘custom’ game setting, which let me create my own
survivor. It’s a very, very limited system, and something I’d
love to see expanded in a possible sequel. Because suddenly, with my
own ‘guy’ in play, I had a reason to care. I now had a personal
investment in keeping him alive to the end.

With a much improved
character creation system, a choice of shelters with an expanded
range of custom options, more locations and an overhaul of the
gameplay – perhaps allowing for direct character control/aiming –
you could have something quite special. I also think there’s a lot
of scope to improve the narrative aspects in terms of branching
events based on decisions you make.

Overall, This War of Mine
has some neat ideas, but it feels more like a framework to a better
game. It fails to engage the player either through gameplay or
narrative, resulting in a monotonous and emotionally hollow
experience. Disappointing.

Friday, 17 July 2015

I know sod all about
Warhammer, but I’ve always wanted to see a fantasy based Total War.
I hope it can breathe new life into the series. As much as I liked
Attila, I think something like this has the potential to really shake
up the franchise in a good way. The early trailers look promising.
Let’s hope they don’t f**k it up.

Sunday, 5 July 2015

The original Homeworld was
released way back in 1999. It’s a fantastic RTS title, not only in
terms of its gameplay mechanics, but also for its visuals, sound and
story. It’s the tale of a ship of exiles, traversing a dangerous
galaxy to rediscover their lost home.

Homeworld was followed in
2000 by an expansion – Cataclysm – which unfortunately isn’t
included in this remastered collection. And then in 2003, Homeworld
2 was released. The sequel was excellent, though it was generally
considered to fall somewhat short of the original.

Both Homeworld 1 & 2
are included in this collection in their original ‘Classic’
state. Although I already own these games, I did have some trouble
with Homeworld 1 the last time I played it on my Win7 system, and I
recall having issues with Homeworld 2 on my older Vista. When the
remastered collection recently went on sale I decided it was worth
the purchase, if only to enable trouble-free access to these two
classic titles.

Of course, this collection
isn’t really about the classic versions, but the newly remastered
editions. I must admit, when I heard the news of Gearbox acquiring
the licence to the Homeworld IP, my reaction wasn’t exactly
positive. But with the release of this package, it’s clear the
people at GX have treated the licence with respect, whilst also
updating these much loved titles in a way that’s more accessible for
new players.

Which is also why I was a
little wary, because I was aware of particular changes to Homeworld 1
I wasn’t sure I’d like. But before we go into detail, I really
have to say that in terms of visuals, the remastered editions look
absolutely gorgeous. I still think the original games look pretty
good but the remasters, Homeworld 1 in particular, now look
absolutely stunning. But, aside from the visuals, how else do the
remastered versions differ from the originals?

Let’s talk about
Homeworld 2 first, because in this case, there’s very little to
say. The remaster of HW2 is essentially all about the upgraded
visuals. Every other aspect of the original game remains relatively
intact. There are, or so it appeared to me, a few balance tweaks here
and there, especially in terms of difficulty, but I’ll speak more
about this later.

Homeworld 1, on the other
hand, has undergone a far more significant overhaul. Perhaps in a
desire to create a degree of parity between the two titles, or simply
perhaps for technical reasons, the developers essentially dropped the
Homeworld 2 UI (with a few tweaks) and gameplay mechanics into
Homeworld 1. This, understandably, upset the purists who simply
wanted a like-for-like visual upgrade.

Me? I’m kind of torn on
the matter. There are certainly advantages to this tweaked Homeworld
2 UI compared to the original, but having played the original HW
numerous times, the remaster felt very, very strange to play. I think
for new players, this is a good change that allows an easy transition
between Homeworld 1 & 2. But personally, I do prefer the classic
version over the remaster, and I wish the option to retain the
original UI and mechanics was available.

As with the HW2 remaster,
it also seems there’s been several adjustments in terms of unit
balance, mission difficulty, resources and AI. Even today, though I
know the game well, I still find the original Homeworld to prove a
challenging experience. It can be a punishing game, perhaps
frustratingly so at times, but for many this was a part of its
appeal.

The remaster, by
comparison, is a total cakewalk. This is largely due to the insane
amount of resources available compared to the original. The AI also
seems far less aggressive. Typically I’d have to restart a mission
or reload a save at some point when playing through the original
version, but in the remaster, I breezed through every level with
ease.

This also applies, though
not as strongly, to Homeworld 2, which is a little easier in it’s
new remastered format compared to the original. These changes may not
be to every fan’s taste, but it’s not like the originals are
going anywhere, and I can understand why certain changes have been
made to make them more accessible for a new audience. And I must
admit that some changes, like the lack of unit fuel in HW1, is
something I actually kind of prefer, although I’d agree it does
subtract another layer of strategy from the experience.

A real issue with the HW1
remaster, however, is that of formations. They’re just completely
broken. In the original, formations, particularly for fighters or
corvettes, were vital to combat efficiency. But in the remastered
HW1, the formations simply don’t work. When combat is joined, any
formation instantly breaks.

Now, due to the apparent
balance changes in the remaster, this isn’t too big of a deal, but
I do feel it leaves fighters feeling somewhat useless compared to the
strike craft in the original. Without working formations, strike
craft simply lack the effectiveness they originally possessed. Will
formations be fixed, or is it simply an issue of the engine and
transplanting HW2 features into HW1? (Perhaps due to HW2 using a
squad based strike craft system?) Either way, it’s another reason
why, as fantastic as the remastered HW1 looks, I’d still rather
play the classic edition.

If you’re new to the
Homeworld series, this collection is an excellent bundle. And if
you’re an older fan, I’d still say it’s worth the purchase, if
only for the convenience of the hassle-free classic versions. Plus,
it’s a joy to see these wonderful games looking so damn good. It’s
a real shame this collection doesn’t include Cataclysm and complete
the set, but maybe it’s something we’ll see in the future.

Overall, this package
offers a lot. It’s not perfect, and I hope they fix the issues with
the HW1 remaster and perhaps make a few balance changes, but aside
from those issues, it comes highly recommended.